[SMM Coking Coal and Coke Daily Brief] 20260908

[SMM Daily Review on Coking Coal and Coke]
Coking coal market:
Linfen low-sulphur coking coal is quoted at 2,550 yuan/mt.
For coking coal, tight supply remains the core feature of the current market. In Shanxi, the main coking coal producing region, ongoing safety inspections and overproduction audits have imposed rigid constraints on production. Mines have been resuming production one after another, but the common issue is that resumption has not brought volumes back. Nearly 50 million mt of capacity is still awaiting resumption, leaving actual effective supply growth very limited. In the short term, the coking coal market is expected to hold up well. However, as an important supplement, Mongolian imported coking coal has seen daily truck arrivals at the Ganqimaodu border crossing rebound to over 700 vehicles, breaking the previous low-level stalemate of around 500 vehicles.
Coke market:
The nationwide average price of quasi-first-grade metallurgical coke (dry-quenched) is 2,310 yuan/mt.
In terms of supply, coking coal prices are still rising, and most coke producers remain clearly loss-making, so they are proactively restricting production. Coupled with active restocking by downstream buyers, coke inventory at coke producers has continued to decline. On the demand side, daily average hot metal production at steel mills has stayed high, providing strong support for coke. However, rising raw material costs have further squeezed steel mill profits, and some steel mills have begun to show expectations for voluntary production cuts, with negative feedback risks on the demand side accumulating. Overall, cost support remains strong, and the coke market is expected to hold up well in the short term. However, negative feedback risks are gradually building, and the supply-demand imbalance in coke is slowly easing. [SMM Steel]